Matt wrote:Not talking about you bud. Talking about the guys that haven't played in a long while getting on the forums and beating a dead horse.

To be fair, it's mostly Alcarin digging up said dead horse(this thread's beginnings), then trotting it around with a few kicks to the hind end, calling it, 'not as bad as it seemed,' and then trying to bury it again. I probably wouldn't've posted, if not for being brought up personally in all but name. All I did was maybe try and give said dead horse a few brief, kind words before patting the gravedirt, and maybe putting the shovel away in the shed. In the beginning, I already gave my opinions with a caveat; a grain of salt, if you will. Then I discovered the shaker'd been hefted up, and upended all over my salty opinions. Probably a bit needlessly, I felt. Let my previous posts be seen as the forum equivalent of telling someone 'when.'

I don't troll people unless I can actively experience their reactions, and that's usually reserved for dear friends of mine. I'm not trolling. What is trolling--what literally -is- trolling, as in trawling-for-reactions trolling, etymogically speaking--is mentioning someone by name, or generally addressing them/their ideas, and then acting surprised when they respond. I think that's pretty well established. In short; don't call me out and I probably won't feel overly-inclined to address it. I feel that's pretty reasonable, and not particularly trolling. If someone decides to publicly say something, it's open for discourse.

B) The majority of the small number of people complaining about the status quo in this thread do not even know what the status quo is because they don't play the game, and haven't for quite a while now. Any idea of what they think the status quo is comes from second-hand information, which is not the best way to present an argument. I don't mean to diminish the value of those arguments, but I do feel that those arguments diminish themselves when they are coming from people who aren't playing the game.

C) The staff have been kind enough to repeat their position on this over and over again.

My suggestion to Ava: when bringing IC information into a conversation to better increase your understanding of what is happening, don't go public. Reach out to the administration directly. Your concerns are valid, because they come from a place of you not understanding what is happening. Not every complaint needs to be public, though. The staff, I'm certain, would be happy to give you answers if you reached out to them with a PM.

The forum shouldn't be a place to drag very specific IC information out into the public for debate while it's ongoing. It may not affect how you play your character, but all too many people struggle with not letting OOC things bleed into the IC. Threads like this, when unchecked, only magnify that issue.

TL;DR - please lock this thread. The admins have given all of the answers that they've needed to, a lot has changed in game, and the only result from this thread continuing to be open will be to further fuel a ridiculous rift in the community.

Whether or not it's meant to be trolling, it seems like trolling. And it's a waste of the community's time, when people are actually working to improve the game and build a more positive atmosphere. We just don't need it.

Never-the-less, at this point, this thread's doing more harm than good, and is perpetuating an 'us' versus 'them' mentality that is exactly the opposite of how we should be trying to approach ourselves as a community. People've spoken and been heard. Admins have changed things; quite a lot of things. This thread doesn't need to continue to be necromanced for the rest of all time.

Unless IC information is the topic of the thread in question, it's a reason to delete posts, not to lock a thread.

Tiamat wrote: Unfortunately IC solutions to IC issues aren't always made public, especially when characters IC would have no business knowing what the arrangement is. Players don't have the whole story, and you'll just have to see what the solution was.

This one's going to die a natural death as the IC solutions -- or at least their main consequences -- slowly become more public knowledge. It's not going to be the one complaint thread to rule them all indefinitely, even if it doesn't get locked.

Next month we'll all hate a different clan; wait and see.

Besides, what creates more of an 'us vs. them' mentality than staff locking complaints about themselves and their supposed favorites?

Tiamat wrote:If you think Utterby is dead, you're either playing at an off-peak time (unfortunate), or you aren't putting yourself out there.

Speaking of, kudos to the players and staff who've been making some of our recent board posts, especially on the most public of our IG boards.

EltanimRas wrote:Besides, what creates more of an 'us vs. them' mentality than staff locking complaints about themselves and their supposed favorites?

I'm going second this strongly. Locking a thread with complaints on it is the single worst response possible to player dissatisfaction, regardless of whether or not you feel that said dissatisfaction is justified. I'm not even particularly grumpy about anything IG right now and even I felt my hackles rising at this suggestion.

I'm confused and a bit dissatisfied, and I think I can share some sentiments with people who left after leaving comments near the beginning of this thread. I must not understand what's actually going on, though. I guess that's why I necromancied this thread and asked if we'd hear back about the plans in action.

krelm wrote:Is there even player dissatisfaction? Everyone who was dissatisfied left (not that I'm saying that's a bad thing. If I wasn't having fun, I'd leave, too.)

Problem solved?

I'm not sure if this was meant in earnest or whether you were trying to make a point. But no - the disappearance of people with grievances is not an adequate way to address said grievances. Closing the player port permanently, by that logic, would be the most effective solution to any and all grievances pertaining to this game.

Pardon me while I get a little existential here, but if you're not enjoying playing something, why not quit? And if you quitting isn't making anyone else not enjoy the game, why ought they quit? The fact of the matter is this thread's been dead for weeks now, so, presumably, the ones who had problems went off to do something more enjoyable with their life, while the people who were having a good time stuck around.

While I'm sure people enjoy the players who left, and the PCs said players play, it isn't like the world revolves around them. Not trying to sound like a dick or anything, but them's the breaks.

krelm wrote:Pardon me while I get a little existential here, but if you're not enjoying playing something, why not quit? And if you quitting isn't making anyone else not enjoy the game, why ought they quit?

You're assuming that grievances are permanent and incapable of being addressed. Essentially that nothing that makes anyone unhappy can (or ought) to be fixed. Plainly, this is not the case.

Also, if the official answer to player complaints is 'If you don't like something, quit,' then good luck running that game. You will find you will very quickly run out of players.

I'm just saying, over the past decade I've played and quit at least half a dozen MUDs, if not more-- at least a couple of which Icarus was running, at that. No matter how much of a fuss I made, or how justified I felt I was in quitting, or how much I felt like the entire MUD should be shut down, said MUD kept on going without me, as if I, or whoever else, had never quit. It was probably better off, even.

A handful of people quitting over something that was fixed ages ago isn't the end of the world.

IC info? I think posting in the constructive criticism forum about PCs being whisked away to safety by admins or rezzed after 'ten ton monster smashes ~dude into oblivion' is pretty legit. Also very vague and not IC info.

Going to pull a Grandpa on this one I think. This is the second instance of something like this I have witnessed personally. Certain PCs shouldn't be saved and others just allowed to die. I mean if you don't want to die a horrible death don't walk into a horrible death scene with people getting smashed into nothing and heads knocked off and stuff. I saw the echo, I saw the dead body and RP'd accordingly after the fact, then I have to change that ICly.

Speaking as one of the admins involved in this situation, I will say the following (and nothing more, in a public forum):

PC death is sometimes an unavoidable consequence of this game and its plots. That is actually a very good thing, it makes the game a much better place for RP.

Unfortunately, while PC death is not a demon to be avoided, it is sometimes a malicious gremlin in the works. It is VERY hard for staff to properly account for all of the actions of every single PC involved in a scene the size of tonight's scene.

Many actions were missed by staff, spammed into oblivion, that would have drastically affected the outcome of this event. Many PCs got whisked away and saved, one was whisked away and not saved merely because it took people petitioning to bring our attention to attempts to save them.

In a scenario where a death results purely from the fact that our screens were spammed with multiple pages of PCs doing things, the game world is not enhanced any by those actions being summarily ignored and dismissed with "Well, the code blinded us and killed you."

That is all I will say on this topic publicly, and I would now like to re-emphasize Taurgalas's post above:

If you have concerns, please voice them to Elder Staff to be addressed.

For my part, I'll be bringing up the subject of that particular policy staff-side.